


Out of the Ashes

by afewreelthoughts



Series: My Words Will Be Your Light [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: ASOIAF Rare Pair Week, F/F, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Near Death Experiences, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 18:09:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17903018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afewreelthoughts/pseuds/afewreelthoughts
Summary: After the world has been saved, Sansa discovers a stranger in the snows outside Winterfell.





	Out of the Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> ASOIAF Rare Pair Week, Day 1: Ashes // Snowflakes
> 
> I own nothing and make no money from this. Everything belongs to George R.R. Martin.

Nothing should have been alive in the snow that day. 

 

Sansa had insisted on accompanying the Winterfell guards on their hunt, perhaps only to remind herself that the world outside the castle walls was still there. 

 

It had only been days before when Sansa, standing with Bran and Arya on the walls of Winterfell, had watched the dragons fly North and cleanse the world in fire. Three dragons and three riders disappeared into the battle: the queen, Lord Tyrion, and Jon. _Jon. She would never see him again._

 

The wind that day was cold enough to kill, and sure enough they found creatures who’d succumbed to it: hares and squirrels caught out of doors. They must have been driven away by the fight and froze to death before they could find a new home.

 

They were just turning back to Winterfell when Sansa thought she saw some movement in the snow where there should have been none. She thought again of the glowing blue eyes of the unearthly things Jon had died to kill and felt for the Valyrian steel dagger he had given her, tucked between two layers of wool. She turned her horse toward the movement. 

 

“My lady?” one of the guards called after her. 

 

Ash still hung in the air like a gauzy blanket over the world, swirling with the falling snow. It clung to Sansa's hands and her horse's mane and the scarf covering her mouth. Through the haze, she could make out a dirty human figure shivering and half-buried in the snow. The poor person’s hair had been burned away, their clothing charred in the fire.

 

Sansa unclasped her cloak to wrap it around the stranger and helped her to her feet. The stranger was a woman, if her delicate face and the soft curves beneath her rags were any indication. She swayed in Sansa’s arms, and Sansa held her tightly to keep her from falling over. Her skin was like ice, but she was still breathing through it all. Something inside her was still fighting.

 

When the guards caught up with Sansa, one of them draped the strange woman over his saddle to take her back to Winterfell. 

 

They lit a roaring fire in one of the spare bedrooms, cut off the woman’s wet rags and draped her in layers of fur. The stranger was a young woman just around Sansa’s age, and the entire castle was asking who she could possibly be, who could have lasted so long through both ice and fire. 

 

Sansa waited by her bedside as the signs of life returned to the stranger, and as she did, she studied the rags on the floor beside her bed, the fine quality of the material, heavy silks and velvets worked in intricate embroidery. This was no wildling woman beset by wights and the dueling forces of light and dark. Sansa had seen the queen only at a distance, atop one of her dragons as she flew North to the Wall. A speck of silver, and then she was gone. But this could not be her. Could it? 

Sansa tossed the rags onto the fire. The strange woman watched them burn with empty eyes. 

 

Sansa was not sure what was best to say, but she had to say something. 

 

“I’m Lady Sansa Stark of Winterfell. You’re safe here. Please let me know of anything you might need.” 

 

The stranger stared into the fire. 

 

"You don’t have to say anything,” Sansa continued. "When you’re warm enough, we’ll have a bath drawn for you and bring you some food and water.” 

 

The stranger still stared into the fire. 

 

She washed herself when they brought her a bath, donned the clothes Sansa gave her, and ate what was put in front of her.

“What should I call you?” 

The words were such a surprise that Sansa looked up from where she had been sewing by the fire, choosing to stay in the woman’s rooms until she chose to speak, but sitting far enough away to allow her some privacy.

The stranger had a lilt to her voice that Sansa vaguely recognized. Her lady’s maid in King’s Landing, Shae, had sounded much the same. 

“I’m Sansa Stark of Winterfell,” Sansa said. 

“I know that. What should I call you?” 

“You can call me what you like,” Sansa said. “Lady Sansa, or Lady Stark, or My Lady, or just my name. What should I call you?” 

The stranger’s face was strikingly delicate and tanned golden in the absence of soot and frost (and a tiny glimpse Sansa had seen of her climbing into the bath, before she thought to turn away, she could tell that she was pale and pink in other places). She had an upturned nose and large blue eyes, so deep a blue they almost looked purple.

“You should call me… Doreah,” she said after too much hesitation for Sansa to take her at her word.

“Doreah, then.” Sansa smiled. “Welcome to Winterfell.”

Doreah took to wearing a scarf wrapped around her head. Sansa first thought it was because she was ashamed of her baldness and the burns on her head, but when she had the maester offer her an ointment, Doreah returned it unused. 

“No burns at all?” Sansa asked the maester.

“She refuses my care, my lady,” he said. 

Now that Sansa thought about it, she hadn’t noticed any burns on the woman’s skin. Strange. 

Doreah remained alone in her rooms every day, and at night, when Sansa visited her, she would ask questions. Questions about Rhaegar and Lady Lyanna. Question about Winterfell. Questions about King’s Landing. 

“I don’t know who’s on the throne,” Sansa told her. “I don’t think they’re going to bother us, whoever they are.” 

They had taken to eating dinner together in Doreah’s rooms, and that night, her line of questioning was all about the Iron Throne. 

“Do you think people wanted the Targaryens back?” Doreah asked, worrying her lip between her teeth.

“We all thought the dragons were dead,” Sansa said. “I understand why Torrhen Stark bent the knee now, having seen them, but without them… I don’t know."

Doreah's hand gripped her knife and fork so hard her knuckles turned white. “Why not?”

“Why not… what? Why not the Targaryens?"

“Yes! King Aerys was mad, but not all of them were.”

“I… I don’t know.” Sansa picked up the flagon of wine. 

“Aerys was a terrible king, but tell me, has there been a good king after him? Why not another - “

 

“My brother was a good king,” Sansa said. 

 

“Your brother?”

 

“Robb Stark, King in the North.” 

 

“What made your brother king?” Doreah said.

 

Sansa met the woman’s’s eyes. “His people wanted him to be. Can you say the same of yours?”

 

The woman stood, still holding her fork and knife. “Of course they do. My people have followed me across the narrow sea. They are waiting for me in King’s Landing, and if you don’t show me the respect that I am due…” 

 

“Are you threatening me?” Sansa said. 

 

“You are addressing your queen.”

 

“Are you threatening me,  _Your Grace_?”

 

The woman stared her down with vivid violet eyes; Sansa wondered how she had not noticed that before.

 

“You must help me,” the queen said, setting down her cutlery weapons. “You must help me retake the throne!” 

 

The queen was older than Sansa and her face had that battle-hardeded harshness that Sansa had seen in Brienne and Arya. Despite all of that, Sansa pitied her.

 

“I can’t.”

 

The queen's mouth became a thin line beneath her fiery eyes. 

 

“It’s winter,” Sansa said. “There’s no safe way to get to King’s Landing.”

 

“You found me.”

 

“Yes, a mile from Winterfell, and you traveled here on dragon back.” Sansa met her violet eyes. “There is no safe way to get back to King’s Landing. You’ll die trying.” 

 

“No,” Daenerys Targaryen said. “That’s not possible.” She sat down, the light in her eyes withering. “It can’t be…” 

 

Sansa reached across the table to take her hand. “You’ve saved us all. Surely that matters more than the throne?"

 

“I hardly remember it,” Daenerys said. “Just falling into ashes.”

 

“You weren’t burned?” Sansa asked. “Not at all.”

 

“Fire cannot kill a dragon.” She said the words as though she had spoken them a thousand times before, as though they had become mundane, meaningless. 

 

“Neither can the cold, it seems,” Sansa said. “You were out there for days."

 

“I don’t remember it,” Daenerys said. “Just you."

 

Sansa realized she was still holding her hand. How quickly Daenerys had gone from fiery rage to quiet sensitivity sent a chill down Sansa’s spine. A slumbering dragon was still a dragon, and Sansa knew she should be afraid… 

 

“Perhaps when the spring comes…”

 

“What?” Daenerys looked up at her. 

 

“Perhaps when the spring comes you can go to King’s Landing,” Sansa said. “Make your case for the Iron Throne.” 

 

Daenerys shook her head. “It would be too late then.”

 

Sansa felt an ache in her chest just looking at the queen. An ache that she’d last felt when she was only a girl, a lifetime ago.

 

"I know too well how much it can hurt to survive, but sometimes it’s the best we can do,” she said.

 

Daenerys squeezed her hand, and Sansa felt the sensation of it run through her, a dangerous feeling, but she had survived every danger she had faced until now. 

 

“So we survive, and we wait for spring?” Daenerys said. 

 

“Yes."


End file.
